Sam SegalEssay Option 2: The Story of the Rape of Dinah

On his way to meet Esau, Jacob asks God, “Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother…for I fear him” (Gen. 33. 11). The next day, Jacob wrestles with God, is blessed, and calls the place of encounter Peniel; he explains, “For I have seen god face to face, and yet my life is preserved” (Gen. 33. 30). The next day, to Jacob’s surprise, Esau meets Jacob with compassion, and Jacob says to Esau, “truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God, with such favor have you received me” (Gen. 33. 8). Jacob’s words upon seeing Esau are redolent of his words upon grappling with God. Jacob’s struggle with his past and his struggle with God coincide and are verbally linked by Jacob afterward. That they are thus associated suggest Jacob’s ability to physically and emotionally revisit his past partially compels God to bless him as Israel.

The following story, of the rape of Dinah, devastates the clean, albeit compelling, foregoing interpretation of Jacob’s blessing. The story of Dinah bridges a parallel between Jacob and Judah that forces the reader to rethink Jacob’s ability to come to terms with his past. The story is also part of a sequence of covenants that complicates Jacob’s blessing.

Jacob and Judah similarly interact with brother and lover. First, Jacob and Judah both deal with their brother’s life as if it were something that should be bought or sold. When Esau is famished he asks Jacob for some pottage, and Jacob says, “First sell me your birthright” (Gen. 26. 31). Similarly, when his brothers suggest killing Joseph, Judah suggests, “What profit is it if we slay our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites” (Gen. 26-27).

Second, Jacob and Judah both purchase a lover and then unwittingly forsake her. After kissing Rachel at the well, Jacob tells Laban, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel” (Gen. 29. 18). Likewise, Judah, mistaking Tamar for a common harlot, says to her, “Come, let me come in to you… I will send you a kid from the flock” (Gen. 38. 16-17). Furthermore, both Jacob and Judah buy women they do not want: Jacob receives Leah instead of Rachel, and Judah has sex with his daughter-in-law instead of a stranger. When Jacob flees Laban and learns someone from his crew has stolen Laban’s household deities, he claims, “Anyone with whom you find your gods shall not live” (Gen. 31. 32). Similarly, when Judah is told Tamar has played the harlot, he says, “Bring her out, and let her be burned” (Gen. 38. 24).

Third, Jacob and Judah both are forgiven by their brother. Esau meets Jacob warmly, and Joseph tells Judah and his brothers, “ Do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life” (Gen. 45. 4). Both Jacob and Judah wrestle with the impulse to treat those close to them as something with which to barter. Moreover, their interactions have a similar shape: conflict with brother, interlude with lover, and resolution with brother. 1

1 In this parallel, there is a troubling discontinuity: Jacob never realizes who has stolen Laban’s household gods, though Judah realizes who his whore was. This discontinuity may suggest Jacob burying his household’s gods, right before Rachel dies, is no coincidence. (When Laban enters Rachel’s tent she says the time of

Only the rape of Dinah separates Jacob’s and Judah’s narratives. When Jacob realizes his sons have slaughtered Hamor’s city, he asks them what they’ve done, and they reply, “Should he treat our sister as a harlot” (Gen. 34. 31). Perhaps more frightening then the genocide, is that Jacob gives no answer. Jacob’s past is mirrored in the Dinah story: just as Jacob buys Esau’s birthright, Shechem buys Jacob’s daughter, and like Jacob hastily condemns Rachel, Jacob’s sons hastily condemn Shechem. If, by this point, Jacob has truly wrestled with his past, why is he unable to answer his sons and keep Judah from the cycle of events through which he went?

The story of Dinah is also the final installment in a group of three, frighteningly arranged, parallel covenants in Genesis. The three covenants are those between Abram and God; Jacob and Laban; and Shechem and Jacob’s sons. In each story, someone makes a sexual yet somehow impertinent attempt, and a covenant is made to right the situation.

The first begins with Abram sleeping with Hagar. Sarai is infertile and tells Abram to sleep with her maid. When Abram does, Sarai is angry and “look[s] with contempt on her mistress” and says to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you” (Gen. 16. 4-5). God then makes a covenant with Abram and says to him, “This is my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised” (Gen. 17. 10). Immediately after the covenant Sarah is fecund and conceives Isaac.

Jacob and Laban make the second covenant. Jacob meets Rachel at a well and kisses her. His kiss seems improper for afterward he “wept aloud” (Gen. 29. 11); moreover, he only receives Rachel after having worked for Laban. Jacob and Laban therefore make a deal. This covenant goes more turbulently then Abram and God’s: Laban gives Jacob Leah at first, and Jacob asks, “what is this you have done to me?” (Gen. 29. 25). Jacob agrees to work for Laban for longer and eventually is given Rachel.

The third and final covenant is between Shechem and Jacob’s sons. Shechem sees Dinah “seized her and lay with her and humbled her” (Gen. 34. 2). Jacob’s sons then tell Shechem, “We cannot do this thing, to give our sister to one who is uncircumcised… Only on this condition will we consent to you” (Gen. 34. 14-15). Once the city has obliged, Simeon and Levi come “upon the city unawares, and kill[ed] all the males” (Gen. 34. 25) The condition of circumcision reminds the reader of where the pattern started and thus how much it has deteriorated. The roles in this final covenant have been reversed. Shechem plays the roll previously filled by Abram or his son, while the descendents of Abram make the covenant. The covenant is also maliciously broken. Jacob’s sons are deceitful and kill Shechem, whose role in the first and second covenants was played by Abram and Jacob. Because the rolls are switched and Jacob’s sons play the part once played by God, Jacob’s sons’ deception forces the reader to simultaneously question their father’s ability deal honestly with God and God’s ability to deal kindly with Jacob.

woman is upon her, and then she dies from giving birth). Yet another continuity is that Jacob is blessed by God right before coming to terms with Esau, just as Judah is blessed by Jacob after being forgiven by Joseph.

After the scene at Peniel, God bless Jacob again, and the two blessings appear on either side of the Dinah story. Just before the second blessing, Jacob’s household “[give] to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had, and the rings that were in their ears; and Jacob hid[es] them under the oak which was near Shechem” (Gen. 35.4). The only other time an oak tree is mentioned2 is after Abram makes his covenant with God, when “the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mam’re” (Gen. 18. 1). Furthermore, Jacob’s hiding his household’s foreign gods is reminiscent of Rachel’s hiding the household gods from Laban. Finally, the oak tree is near Shechem, where Jacob’s sons make their covenant with Shechem. The location of Jacob’s second blessing, which is full of reference to the three parallel covenants, and its narrative proximity to the rape of Dinah suggest that Jacob’s blessing may have degenerated as the covenants did. 3

The story of the rape of Dinah both challenges Jacob’s ability to struggle with his past and ends a sequence of three analogous covenants that come to a head right before Jacob’s second blessing. The rape of Dinah does not invalidate Jacob’s blessing: it exposes some of the problems that may arise. Could rolls be reversed? Will Jacob and his descendents exhibit the qualities God found noteworthy in Jacob? Will they lie to one another? And how different is it from a common or vulgar exchange of goods and services?

2 It is the only mention besides later in the same scene when Rachel’s nurse dies.3 Frightening as well is that “God fell upon the cities that were round about them, so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob” (Gen. 35. 5) In case the reader may have begun to doubt God’s destructive capability.